E-MERGEnt > Self: Art Teaching in the Future

The year is 2025 and I am in my seventh year of teaching art at a high school. Over the years I have been adding more technology into my classroom, starting with the basics like Photoshop and Illustrator, then added in more advanced technologies once they were available and once I figured out how to use them. This year I hit the jackpot: I was finally able to get my hands on some virtual reality headsets and VR programming software so that students could create their own virtual world to explore. Previously in the class I would have students create the worlds solely on the computer and have them explore the worlds that their classmates made that way, however with this new technology students can physically immerse themselves in the world and can walk around in it.

I want my students to be able to experience different places, real or imaginative and have to witness certain events in these worlds in order to open up their eyes to what others might be going through. The project was inspired by a time in my first year in college when I participated in a VR experience presented by PETA where I was a chicken taken to the slaughterhouse. In the world that PETA set up, you are playing as a chicken and you are able to walk around in a field, but then you and your other chicken friends are captured by some humans and are taken to the slaughter factory where you are in crowded pens, have your claws and beaks clipped, you are force fed grains, and you are eventually put on a conveyor belt that takes you to your death. The experience jostled me to the point where I got turned off by meat and animal products for several months. Even now I occasionally gag at the thought of eating meat and eggs! PETA used the VR technology to get across a certain agenda and I want the students to do the same, but not to that level of morbidity.

The technology that we are using involves a video game creation program type of thing that allows the user to make a Three Dimensional digital space from scratch. There are textures, colors, building materials and so on that are available for use. Students would also then be able to model other characters and or objects and animate them to perform certain actions. I would say it would be similar to a combination of a sandbox building program, an animation program, and a 3-D modeling program all in one

Once everything is set up and the student is able to test out their world and scenario on the computer, the file would then be uploaded to the Virtual Reality program and the student would put on the headset and experience the story being told.

This is a project that will help open up the students' minds and let them explore ideas that they might not be able to in the physical realm, which aligns perfectly with my goal as their teacher.